[Tex/LaTex] your favorite Emacs and/or AUCTeX command/trick

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What is your favorite Emacs and/or AUCTeX command/trick?

The point here is that I don't know what I don't know. I'm an Emacs and AUCTeX user looking to improve my Emacs & AUCTeX use, especially regarding efficiency. I've been using the Emacs–AUCTeX combo for a while (4–5 years) and have a well-established routine at this point. I'm quite satisfied with this combo, but often wonder if I'm doing something in an inefficient way without even knowing it.

Thus I am I hoping to learn, for example, some ideas for things to add to my .emacs file or new shortcut keys (though I suspect I already know most of those). So if you have a tip you think I (and others) might benefit from, please share it.

Best Answer

Finding tips

It is hard to say what the best tips is for you. Especially if you do not give a more detailed description of your workflow. The best way to find this might be to read the manual from cover to cover. Also make sure to read the RefTeX manual since it is included in Emacs and you should use its commands for handling citations and cross-references. Other places to find tips is to peek at other peoples .emacs and go through emacs, auctex, reftex and the equivalent tags on Stack Overflow and Super User.

Learning and configuring Emacs is a never-ending process as described in A simpleton's guide to (...)TeX workflow with emacs. Thus, you will learn more and more as you go. That you learn something new is not necessarily a sign of that you have been inefficient before that.

My tips

The following are some that tips I would like to share. They might be irrelevant for you and therefore the advice above might be the best.

Find the AUCTeX and RefTeX commands that are useful for you and learn them, see Useful shortcuts or key bindings or predefined commands for emacs+AUCTeX.
Use folding to fold macros and environments and it will be easier to focus on the content of your document. To use folding you have to activate TeX-fold-mode. This can be done by either activating it temporarily, by M-x TeX-fold-mode, or permanently, by placing the following in your .emacs
```
  (add-hook 'TeX-mode-hook #'TeX-fold-mode) ;; Automatically activate TeX-fold-mode.
```

In both cases you have to also do C-c C-o C-b to fold every item in the buffer (there are other commands to fold parts of buffers). Here follows a simple buffer without folding:

A simple LaTeX buffer with unfolded items

The following is the same buffer but with folding. If the cursor is placed on a folded item it is unfolded, e.g. if the cursor is placed on an emphasized part it unfolds to \emph{an emphasized part}.

A simple LaTeX buffer with folded items

Use the function to expand " into csquotes macros (see also AUCTeX's csquotes integration does not work together with babel).
Use AUCTeX's integration with language packages, see How can I make AUCTeX use the spelling dictionary in the same language as babel is loaded with? and How can I make AUCTeX use the spelling dictionary in the same language as polyglossia is loaded with?
Use LaTeX-math-mode for efficient insertion of math as described in https://stackoverflow.com/a/8055820/789593 under "AUCTeX's LaTeX-math-mode".
Do not use AUCTeX only. Use YASnippet to make it easier to insert often inserted structures, see Working with templates. Draft with Org-mode as described in Everyday LaTeX and workflow?

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] emacs / AuCTeX and itemize

Step 1: close Emacs completely and start it up again. This will fix the problem if it was caused by you inadvertently changing some setting/variable.

Step 2: if that didn't work:

comment out everything in your .emacs except for the line loading AUCTeX. In my case, the line is:

(load "auctex.el" nil t t)

The command

M-;

will comment-out everything in the active region. It will also uncomment everything in the region, if it is already commented, so you'll want to use that rather than manually adding a whole pile of ;;.

Following step 2, you should have an unmodified version of Emacs + AUCTeX, so you should have the correct behaviour back. This will confirm that the problem is something in your .emacs file conflicting with AUCTeX. If the problem persists, it may be a bug in AUCTeX, although that seems unlikely for such a commonly-used feature.

Step 3: Uncomment more of your .emacs, and restart. If the problem returns, it was caused by the now-uncommented code. If it doesn't, repeat the process until you find the code that triggers the problem.

Step 4: solve the problem yourself, or ask another question about the specific code that you discovered that caused the conflict.

[Tex/LaTex] emacs auctex: how to get \frac{}{} and \bm{}

I can't find anything like that in the auctex documentation, but if you'd like to have shortcuts for them, add the following lines to your .xemacs/init.el file (if you use xemacs) or your .emacs file (if you use emacs):

(defun insert-frac ()
  "We insert  \\frac{}{} and position point before the first right brace."
  (interactive)
  (progn
    (insert "\\frac{}{}")
    (backward-char)
    (backward-char)
    (backward-char)))
;;--------------------------------------------------------------------
(defun insert-bm ()
  "We insert  \\bm{} and position point before the right brace."
  (interactive)
  (progn
    (insert "\\bm{}")
    (backward-char)))
;--------------------------------------------------------------------
(global-set-key "\C-cf"   'insert-frac)
(global-set-key "\C-cb"   'insert-bm)

You can then insert \frac{}{} and put point inside the first pair of braces by typing Control-c f and you can insert \bm{} and put point inside the braces by typing Control-c b.